Subtle synchronicity
April 3, 2009 by Juliet Chase
Filed under Juliet's Journal
I suspect that the last day of March is going to turn out to be a pivotal one for me. In trying to follow my own advice on problem solving, I was researching in the ‘people also bought this’ section of Amazon for potential expertise. I saved off a couple of interesting books, one of them being Barbara Sher’s Refuse to Choose, but I was a little too impatient to wait on shipping. So while I was out running errands I stopped in at the local used bookstore just to check. They had it in stock. Another book practically leaped off the shelf at me, This Time I Dance!, by Tama Kieves, a recounting of how she stopped being a lawyer and started being a writer (and she’s upfront with the bumps in between.) Getting them home, I poured a glass of wine and read, and read, and read.
I found myself described in both books, pretty much on the first page. One described my personality and the other my journey. Wednesday and Thursday, I finished my first go through and then re-read certain chapters of each all the while wandering around the house feeling like someone had pulled about the half the stuffing out of me. I didn’t feel sick; just weak. I’ve been introspective enough over the years to have spotted my pattern of indepth obsession with a topic or career only to find that I had absolutely no further interest in it about ten years later. But I’d subconsciously classified it as a character flaw and a case of bad choices combined with poor analysis. Seeing it all described in Refuse to Choose as normal, predictable, and something to be celebrated instead of fixed was a shock – so was letting go of that internalized profile. Seeing my very same dilemmas and self-doubts described in This Time I Dance! was comforting and encouraging, maybe I’m not doing it wrong after all… I’m very curious to see where that takes me next.


